Best Bigot (2011)

State Senator Lori Klein

It's bad enough that a gum-smacking idiot like Anthem Republican Lori Klein is a state senator, but then, Arizona's Legislature is filled to the brim with lightweights who've never evolved emotionally or intellectually past the eighth grade. She is also a class-A bigot and Mexican-hater, yet even that is fairly common these days in Sand Land's highest deliberative body.A water-carrier for the state's premier xenophobe, state Senate President Russell Pearce, Klein sticks out because she is so crass, so proud of being what she is: white trash. Along with her colleague in prejudice, state Senator Al Melvin, she gets her kicks during Senate hearings cracking jokes at any citizens and lobbyists who speak English with an accent. She once told Latino demonstrators outside the Capitol to go back to Mexico, despite the fact they were American citizens and legal residents. And she's infamous for reading a letter on the Senate floor from a substitute teacher filled with lies about Mexican-American school kids and how they'd rather be gangsters than get an education. When it was revealed that the letter was bunk, Klein was unapologetic. A loathsome, racist cretin, she has no place in public life, and yet there she sits in the Legislature, one more reason for the world to regard Arizona with horror, and one more reason for Arizonans to be embarrassed.